If there is one neighborhood that all tourists have heard of, even before coming to New York, it is certainly Greenwich Village, or simply the Village, as locals call it. Even if a person does not know what or whom the neighborhood is associated with or why it is so popular, the name Greenwich Village always rings a familiar bell.
Its name can actually be a bit confusing, because many people think that since it’s a village, it is a separate town, apart from New York City. In fact, this would not be a completely erroneous judgment because initially, when the British conquered Manhattan from the Dutch, Greenwich, or Groenwijck in Dutch, was indeed an individual hamlet, developing separately from New Amsterdam to the south. But today, obviously, the Village is an integral part of New York and - outlined by Houston Street in the south, Broadway to the east, Hudson River to the west and 14th Street to the north - is one of the city's most dynamic and diverse neighborhoods.
In the very beginning, even before the Europeans settled Manhattan, the Indians used this area as a tobacco field. The Dutch continued cultivating tobacco and by the time the English took possession of Manhattan the area had become a vast idyllic agricultural countryside. In the early 18th century it officially was registered as a village in the Common Council records. Unfortunately, the village lost its innocent atmosphere when the authorities built a prison there in the first quarter of the 19th century, which became New York State's first penitentiary. The prison was always overcrowded and its unsanitary conditions generated many riots, which led to the prisoners' early release, something that threatened the tranquility of the neighborhood. In fact, when the Washington Square military grounds became a park in the middle of the 19th century, with elegant townhouses surrounding it, the grounds were still not considered part of Greenwich Village - they were a separate district. The park was incorporated into the Village only towards the end of the 19th century, during Manhattan's expansion and construction boom.
Although Greenwich Village is known to have launched many New York artists and writers in the 20th century, the neighborhood had already been an international bohemian oasis in the 19th. Writers such as Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain, poet Walt Whitman and painter Winslow Homer all worked in the neighborhood. In the first half of the next century the Village was home - though usually temporary - to painters Jackson Pollack, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali, writers Anais Nin and William Faulkner, playwright Eugene O'Neill and dancer Isadora Duncan.
The year 1924 brought a major sensation to the New York theater scene: the Cherry Lane Theater opened on 38 Commerce Street. Today it is the oldest Off-Broadway theater in the city. Originally a tobacco warehouse and box factory, it was transformed into a theater by famous American playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, who invited other American and foreign playwrights to write for the troupe. In the 40s and 50s the Cherry Lane stage was home to important experimental movements such as The Living Theatre and Theatre of the Absurd. By now the movements are no longer experimental, but are part of the theatrical establishment.
Then, in 1931, at 14 West 8th Street, New York socialite and hostess Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney used per private art collection to found the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her museum was a response to the Museum of Modern Art, which exhibited mostly European paintings. The collection of the Whitney Museum grew intensely and in 1966 the museum moved to a much bigger building on Madison Avenue and East 75th Street.
Greenwich Village was also home - from 1938 and 1947 - to America's first racially integrated nightclub, Café Society. Opened at 1 Sheridan Square by impresario Barney Josephson, it featured performances by all the great American jazz players: Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole, Miles Davis, Lena Horne, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn and others.
In the 1950s the Village was invaded by the Beat Generation, a group of writers who abandoned literary and aesthetic standards, rejected materialistic values, experimented with drugs, eastern religions and unconventional sexuality, and who in their writing portrayed man in a very candid straightforward manner. The leading exponents of the movement were writers William Burroughs with his novel Naked Lunch and Jack Kerouac with On the Road, and poet Allen Ginsberg with the poem Howl.
In the early 1960s the local icon was Bob Dylan, who popularized folk rock throughout the country. He had migrated to New York from Minnesota hoping to pair up with America's greatest 20th century folk singer Woody Guthrie. Dylan played at all the local clubs and bars and in just a couple of years his songs were being sung in every American household. Later in the 60s and then in the 70s the Village was the most beloved stage for artists such as Simon & Garfunkel, Jim Hendrix, Joan Baez, Barbara Streisand, the Velvet Underground, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simons and others.
Greenwich Village was also home of the gay liberation movement, which fought for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the US. It all started with the Stonewall riots, a series of violent demonstrations by the gay community against a police raid at the Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street in 1969. In the 60s gays had still been considered a social minority, and even an aberration, and had to deal with a discriminating legal system. The riots inspired the gay community to finally stand up for its rights and demand social equality, which was finally achieved only in 2011 when New York State officially recognized same-sex marriage.
Today Greenwich Village is no longer the great bohemian retreat that it once was. Although there are many allusions to its glorious non-conformist and avant-garde past, such as the blues and jazz clubs and the hippie shops, the residents are mostly second generation yuppies who hardly even listen to the music or read the literature that made the Village world famous. Real estate prices have gone up significantly, making life for young unestablished artists or musicians extremely difficult. The neighborhood does, however, offer a wide array of excellent pubs, bars, European-style cafes and restaurants with international cuisine. In fact, due to its excellent choice of eateries, today the Beat Generation has been fully replaced by the Bite Generation.